The automotive industry has made much progress in the development of placing peripheral devices in automobiles under electronic control. In the past, electric and electronic devices such as interior and exterior lighting, heating, air conditioning, door locks, ignition systems, braking systems, multimedia systems and other devices, were either controlled manually or by electromechanical control systems such as relays and switches. Electronic control of such peripheral devices, however, allows for more flexibility in features and lower overall system and implementation cost.
Computerized control of interior car lighting, for example, can be used to create situation specific lighting profiles. Situation dependent light intensity profiles can be programmed to allow for interior lights to illuminate immediately when a the car is unlocked in the evening, stay on when passengers exit the car, then slowly dim once the car door has been shut. Such flexibility can be obtained by interfacing microcontrollers and/or microprocessors directly to lighting devices throughout the car. Such microprocessors and microcontrollers can issue pulse width modulated signals to control the illumination level of each lighting device, as well as perform diagnostic measurements of the lights themselves. The microprocessor or microcontroller can even use these diagnostic measurements to determine whether an illumination device has been burnt out or whether the illumination device is illuminated at a proper illumination level.
These microprocessor and microcontroller-based voltage regulation techniques can be used effectively within an automotive system to decrease the total power required to run a car's electrical system. This power savings can help optimize fuel consumption in a vehicle, as well reduce CO2 and other emissions.
As more and more devices are being placed under microprocessor or microcontroller control, however, the microprocessor interface has become more complex and loaded as each successive generation of automobiles is brought to market. For example, some state of the art automotive systems may require 80 or more controllable modules. In the field of automotive control systems, what is needed are systems and methods for dealing with the higher microprocessor interface traffic and control resource loading.